Connecting people through art 

Bill Viola

Man of Sorrows

Bill Viola’s Man of Sorrows – from a series entitled The Passions – is the portrait of an anonymous individual’s encounter with deep sorrow and loss. Like traditional devotional icons of the suffering Christ, we are presented with the image of an ordinary man in tears, weeping inexplicably in a pain that only intensifies, framed in standard portrait style, displayed on a small, portable, table top flat-panel screen. The artist describes the image as offering a painfully “privileged window into a private, intimate moment of extreme anguish”. Throughout the slow-moving sequence, the man remains in a perpetual state of sadness and tears.